Maybe you've already fallen off the wagon. Or maybe you're hanging on by your fingernails. If you are like most Americans, you are determined to lose weight this year. You will eat healthier. You will exercise more. You will beat the odds.

To do so, local weight-loss and fitness experts say, requires a combination of inner motivation, determination, discipline and, most importantly, patience.

"People make big mistakes in that they think they can change big things," says Lisa Sanders, assistant clinical professor of internal medicine and education at Yale School of Medicine and the author of "The Perfect Fit Diet."

Sanders says anyone who keeps a food diet for a week is likely to discover what they are doing wrong. She says if people could make one specific change, even a small one, like deciding to forgo the french fries at McDonald's, they are likely to have more success.

But, Sanders adds, "People need to exercise more."

"Change is hard, but weight loss is less important than being fit," she said. "It's more important to be fit than to be thin. You know it's the right thing to do. When you diet, the more weight you lose, the harder it is to keep it off. But with exercise, it's exactly the opposite, the more you exercise, the more it's easier to keep exercising because you become more fit."

The problem, says Mary Jo Brennen, health and wellness director at the Torrington YMCA, is people expect to become fit fast.

"Most people make the mistake of going too hard, too fast," she says. "They have a huge goal and they go full-bore, and it's too much and they stop. I tell people to start small with achievable goals."

For instance, if your ultimate goal is to lose 50 pounds, start by determining to lose 8 pounds in six weeks.

But Dr. Paul Lessak, a Waterbury Ph.D. who has worked in weight loss for 25 years, says weight loss is more than counting calories and looking at numbers on a scale. Most people who overeat do so for psychological reasons, he says. It's critical to understand those reasons and remedy them before any reasonable weight loss can take place.

"The first thing I want to do is understand the causes of the problem," Lessak says. "We want to correct the problem. With a typical 50-year-old, most of their problems are related to psychological overeating, emotional overeating, bad eating behaviors, negative lifestyle habits. They have all these overeating triggers. I'll work with them to correct those problems. The reason why they're gaining weight is because of all these red lights."

Lessak quotes grim statistics on diets.

"If you get together 200 people who are going to go on a diet, you'll find that if you follow them, only five of those will ever lose the weight they set out to lose," he said. "The alarming statistic is that of the five who reach their goal, only one of them will keep it off. Of the four who hit their goal and the 195 who never hit their goal, most of them will gain all their weight back and then some. What it's saying is, 'If you want to gain weight, you go on a diet.'"

In a country where consumers spend an estimated $35 billion on weight-loss products annually, many researchers have found that although it has a small initial effect, dieting does not work in the long run. A 2007 study by UCLA researchers found those on diets typically lose 5 percent to 10 percent of their initial weight in the first six months, but that at least one-third to two-thirds of people on diets regain more weight than they lost within four to five years. The UCLA analysis looked at 31 long-term studies of diets.

"Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study.

Nevertheless, some people do manage to lose weight and keep it off. And, increasingly, experts are placing more of an emphasis on being fit, regardless of what the scale says.

"It's not weight that kills you," Sanders said. "Weight is not as important as we thought. It's a lack of activity and weight is an element of that lack of activity."

Consequently, Brennen says, it's important to consult with a professional and have a clear plan in sight before you show up at the gym, determined to sweat yourself into a lather. Most gyms have a fitness coordinator who can point you in the right direction or set you up with a plan, often at no additional cost.

Glenell Morris, registered dietitian at Charlotte Hungerford Hospital in Torrington, recognizes time constraints can put a damper on a person's commitment to fitness. Both she and Sanders suggest tackling the problem in small doses. "People think they have to go out and exercise for an hour," Morris says. "If you are just starting out, you can do a 10-minute walk in the morning, 10 minutes in the afternoon and 10 minutes in the evening."

Sanders agrees. "You have to integrate this into your life," she says. "If you vowed to exercise, take a 30-minute walk every day or walk for 30 minutes every day at lunch time."

Sanders notes 60 percent of Americans described their lifestyle as sedentary. "If you walk a half an hour a day at least that's not sedentary," she says. "The greatest benefit is going from not doing anything to doing something."

Morris suggests people use the governmental guidelines on portion control (choosemyplate.gov) to combat what Brennen describes as "portion distortion" in the typical American diet.

Most experts say a little bit of commitment and a changes like this can make a difference over time.

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